


secrets stifled and yet heard

by Shadows_in_the_Light_of_Day



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bodhi Rook Needs a Hug, Canon-Typical Violence, Cassian is Trying His Best to be helpful, Gen, Panic Attacks, Psychological Torture, but i tagged one or two because IMPLICATIONS, i don't think there are any actual pairings in this?, or like four hugs is also good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 13:04:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9273041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadows_in_the_Light_of_Day/pseuds/Shadows_in_the_Light_of_Day
Summary: Bodhi has always been good at keeping secrets. Unfortunately for him, he's not so great at that anymore. Or, rather, he's no longer sure when his mind is going to end up being pulled apart again.





	

“Are you the pilot? The shuttle pilot?”

With these words, Cassian Andor saves Bodhi Rook’s life, but he will never know that, because Bodhi is good at keeping secrets, has always been good at keeping secrets. Because, in light of everything that has happened, he is not about to trust Cassian just because the man saved his life. He needs more time. He will not make himself vulnerable so easily, not now.

Bodhi knows about secrets. He also knows, courtesy of Saw Gerrera, how it feels to have his every secret violated and laid bare. He knows he couldn’t have stopped it – how could he have, when he was tied down and helpless – but he’s promised himself that he will not let anything like it happen again.

Saw Gerrera had no interest in how Bodhi had become implicit in Galen Erso’s secrets, only in whether Bodhi was telling the truth. Bodhi thinks, if Galen trusted Saw that much, maybe it’s all right that he wasn’t able to keep the secrets Galen had told him to.

_“You can’t tell anyone, Bodhi, understand? I know you wouldn’t, of course, but even if your tongue happened to slip… If you were to say something, things could be very bad for you. Other people might want you to-”_

_“I get it,” he says, wondering vaguely if he’s really strong enough to stop someone who intends to harm him. “Don’t worry. I’m good at keeping secrets.”_

And he was, until there were questionably insane rebel extremists and monsters that could see inside his head, until something that didn’t _belong_ there was in his head, determining whether or not his secrets were known in spite of what he wanted.

He can’t help but feel that he’s betrayed Galen. That’s the thing that haunts him, through the shock of being rescued only to see his home destroyed in front of him. The memory of the actual torture isn’t so bad, he tells himself. He wouldn’t have minded being tortured if it hadn’t all been inside his head, burning through his memories in search of the one thing Saw Gerrera wanted.

Bodhi is weak and nervous and not suited for combat – which is why he is, was, a cargo pilot instead of something more _important_ – but he promised Galen he would keep his secrets, and he would have. He did. Only he didn’t, exactly, but it wasn’t his fault, except that it was.

He thinks – but he isn’t sure, because this is not what happened – that if they had chosen instead to tear him apart physically, he could probably have endured it. He’s probably wrong, he knows he’s probably wrong – he’s only a stuttering cargo pilot with constantly shaking hands, after all – but it helps a little bit. Thinking that is better than thinking about what happened, what actually happened.

He tries to tell himself the only lingering effect of this will be the knowledge that he couldn’t keep Galen’s secrets. (His own secrets don’t matter to him; he’d always planned to be the one to pay the price if the secrets he had shared with Galen were brought to light.) And for a little while, after he escapes with Cassian and Jyn and the others, he believes it.

On the ship, en route to Eadu, he wakes up shrieking and clawing at his head, trying to pry off the tentacles that aren’t there.

“What the hell?” He knows that it’s Kaytoo talking, in the very small part of his brain that knows he isn’t still being tortured, but what does it _matter_ that Kaytoo knows he’s screaming, Kaytoo can’t help-

It’s his fault this happened, anyway. If he’d been calmer – if he hadn’t been panicked, shaking, rendered half nonverbal with terror – they would have believed him. Saw wouldn’t have had any reason to rip his brain apart searching for the truth if he’d _just been calmer_.

He tries to tell them – although who he is telling is unclear; it might be Saw, but then again it might be Cassian or Galen or someone completely unrelated to this mess he’s gotten himself into – that he’s telling the truth, really, that they don’t have to do this.

But they did it anyway. Even after they knew he wasn’t lying, Saw Gerrera had let his creature keep going. Bodhi doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand why he deserved this, why he had agreed to this.

He also can’t quite remember where he is.

* * *

Cassian is jolted from the brink of sleep by screams and Kaytoo demanding answers from the source. He almost pulls his blaster out, but then, if they were in danger, Kaytoo would be defending them all against it instead of sitting in the pilot’s chair, fussing at the noise.

Bodhi is on the floor, shrieking, and Baze is trying to hold him down. It shouldn’t be hard, when Baze is so much stronger, but Bodhi’s panic seems to exceed even Baze’s strength.

“What’s wrong with him?” Chirrut is frowning, as if he already knows what’s hurting Bodhi and does not like it at all.

“You’re the one who’s so in balance with the Force, you tell us!” Jyn snaps. She is standing over Bodhi and Baze, and as Cassian reaches her side, he realizes how tense she is, sees unconcealed horror on her face.

“I knew he was unbalanced,” mutters Baze, straining to hold Bodhi still, “but this is more than I expected.”

It’s horrible, even to Cassian, who has, in the last twenty years or so, seen countless unspeakably terrible things, because there’s no _reason_ for this. Bodhi is wide awake, certainly, but he obviously doesn’t know where he is or why he’s here.

“What triggered this?” he asks. Jyn shakes her head.

“He was asleep, I thought. I don’t know, it was so fast. He just started screaming-”

For a moment, Bodhi’s screams become coherent pleas of agonized terror, and Cassian listens.

“Galen Erso sent me! I’m telling the truth, I swear! Please don’t do this, please, Galen Erso sent me… You can’t do this, you can’t…”

He claws at the sides of his head, as if trying to tear his hair out, or else to tear something away from his head. Cassian drops to his knees, not knowing what he can do, not knowing what triggered this, let alone how to stop it.

“Galen said you’d listen!” Bodhi wails. “He said I could trust you, he said you wouldn’t hurt me… W-why are you _doing this_ …?”

“What is he talking about?” Kaytoo asks. “What is hurting him?”

“Galen Erso told him to find Saw Gerrera.” Cassian can’t help but feel sick as he realizes what must have happened. “Gerrera must have-“

“It must have happened just before we were captured,” Chirrut says. “That would explain the way he was acting when you spoke to him.”

“Saw wouldn’t-“ Jyn shakes her head, hesitates, then lowers her gaze so that she does not have to look at Bodhi, who is quieter now, but still twitching with silent torment.

“He must have had a reason,” she says at last, and none of them – not even Kaytoo, apparently – want to risk telling her that Saw Gerrera had seemed unhinged enough to torture Bodhi at the slightest provocation.

Baze releases his hold on Bodhi. The pilot makes a sobbing noise, quiet and pitiful and exhausted, and is silent. Cassian can’t tell if he’s fallen back asleep, or if he’s just too tired to speak to them.

“That was horrifying,” Chirrut murmurs, “and I could not even see it.”

“What did you sense?” Cassian asks. He doesn’t want to know, but at the same time he feels he needs to. “Do you know what-?”

“I cannot read minds,” Chirrut informs him. “I do not know what was done to him. I do not _want_ to know. He felt terrified, abandoned, perhaps even betrayed. I do not think he understood why he was being forced to endure such torment.”

_Cassian_ doesn’t understand why anyone would want to hurt Bodhi. Bodhi, who was so scared just a minute ago. Bodhi, whose voice and hands shake, but who is trying, he realizes now, so, so hard, just to keep it together.

He understands that there are situations where it might have been necessary, but if it had been him, if there had been absolutely _no way_ to determine if Bodhi was telling the truth otherwise, he would have shot him after. He’s not sure it would have been the right thing to do, but it would have at least been merciful.

“How do we help him?” Cassian asks. Jyn hesitates, then shrugs helplessly. Baze and Kaytoo are silent.

“He trusts you,” Chirrut says. “Or, at least, he trusts you more than the rest of us.”

“What do you mean?”

“You helped him.” Cassian is beginning to wonder if Baze and Chirrut have some kind of telepathic link. It’s almost frightening how they always seem to know what the other one is thinking.

“There was something very wrong with him when you spoke to him,” Chirrut contributes, “and it is entirely probable that you prevented the trauma he’d endured from breaking him.”

“I didn’t stop it from giving him _debilitating nightmares_ ,” Cassian protests.

“No,” Chirrut agrees, “but you still may have saved his life.”

* * *

It’s cold when he wakes up, and he shivers, but at least he can remember now where he is. That he’s safe. That his nightmare was just a nightmare. (Except it was a nightmare that _happened to him_ before it became the most terrifying dream he’s ever had. Except he’d lived it first and it’s not fair that he has to relive it again now.)

“Bodhi? Are you…?” The voice – Cassian’s, he thinks – trails off, as if the speaker knows better than to ask if he’s okay.

He’s lying on the floor of the ship, Jyn and Cassian kneeling next to him. Chirrut and Baze sit together a short distance away, and Kaytoo, of course, is up in the cockpit.

Everyone except Kaytoo is watching him, and all of them, Bodhi is sure, haven’t gotten any sleep since his panic attack, however long ago that was.

“I’m sorry-“ he starts, and both Cassian and Baze shake their heads.

“It’s not your fault,” Cassian tells him, but Bodhi has a terrible thought and glances at Jyn, terrified of what he might have said – of what she might know.

_I don’t know her that well and I don’t know how she’d react to how close I was to Galen and, and…and I’m scared. I’m scared and I used to be able to keep my mouth shut, but I thought I had to tell the truth so I don’t know what I_ said _…_

Jyn’s face is impassive; now that he thinks about it, Bodhi doesn’t actually know if she knows how to smile. But, he realizes, she’s struggling. Struggling to keep herself impassive. Something has rattled her, and yet here she sits, next to him, which makes him think maybe he didn’t say too much.

“Why did they hurt you?” she asks.

“Jyn!” Cassian hisses. “Don’t-“

“It was because I was so scared.” As he pulls himself into a sitting position, Bodhi remembers repeating the same words over and over again, because his brain was on the verge of shutting down, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “It was my own fault, I…”

Cassian curses. “What kind of person would think torturing someone who was scared out of his mind is okay?”

“Saw doesn’t – didn’t – trust anyone anymore,” Jyn says. “Not even me, really, I don’t think. If my father had known Saw would hurt you, I don’t think he would have sent you. I’m _certain_ he wouldn’t have sent you…”

Bodhi _wants_ to believe Galen wouldn’t have sent him, but somehow he thinks that if Galen had cared about him as much as he cares about Galen, he would have found someone else to do this thing. That if Galen had really cared about him, he wouldn’t have asked him to risk torture and death for the sake of his plan.

(He doesn’t regret it, but he does doubt, after having his mind picked apart and his memories violated, that Galen really cared about him. He wants to think these thoughts are just a result of his obviously deteriorating mental state, but he’s not sure. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be sure of anything again.)

“I did exactly what he told me,” he chokes, “and they didn’t believe me. They tied me up- And, okay, why the _fuck_ did Saw Gerrera have a psychic octopus thing in his basement, I don’t get it and I don’t remember what he called it either, b-but…”

He has to make sure he tells the truth. He can’t lie, he’ll never lie again, just in case someone else happens to have a psychic monster in their basement and a desire to torture him to the brink of insanity.

(He doesn’t understand why he _didn’t_ go completely mad. In some ways, he wishes he would have.)

Cassian rubs his back, awkwardly, like he knows that’s what he’s supposed to do but doesn’t quite know _how_ to do it.

“I _told him the truth_ ,” Bodhi says, pleading, as if he’s back in that cave, insisting someone believe him. “I told him _everything_ and it still… Do you know, anything can be a lie? ‘You can’t do this’, that’s a lie. That’s a lie and it… You guys _don’t understand_ I don’t know how to tell you…”

“But you told the truth,” Cassian says. “You told the truth when you _could_ – when you weren’t begging him to stop doing something he never should have done to you in the first place, you told him the truth. That’s probably what saved you.”

_No,_ Bodhi thinks, _you saved me, because I was in that prison cell and I couldn’t remember who I was or why they’d done this to me and it was killing me. But then you asked me who I was and so I had to remember. I couldn’t lie after what they’d done to me, so I had to remember who I was so I could be sure I was telling the truth._

“But it _didn’t save me_ ,” he says, his voice catching and twisting in on itself with pain. (It’s not unlike the way his mind had broken and frayed in Saw Gerrera’s basement.) “He still _tortured me_ …”

“I know,” says Jyn, “I know. You didn’t deserve it.”

This, from the girl who lost her parents at seven, who has every right to say that she’s been through far worse than he ever has, who has every right to tell him to get over it. He doesn’t want to be pitied, not by her or anyone else, but at the same time, if _she’s_ telling him he didn’t deserve what happened, then maybe, just maybe, he didn’t.

“I didn’t?”

“Of course you didn’t!” Cassian is trembling with barely-controlled fury. “I mean, I mean...hell, what could you have done to deserve that? If they had no choice but to torture you, they should have killed you after, not left you like this!”

“Cassian.” Baze’s voice is deep and calm, yet somehow disapproving. “Think about what you’re saying.”

“No, he’s right.” Bodhi stares down at the floor beneath him. “I should be dead. It would be better.”

(Bodhi can’t help but wonder if Saw’s monster would have thought that was true.)

Cassian runs his hands through his hair. “That isn’t what I meant. That’s not what I meant at all…”

“You’re right, though,” Bodhi says. “If I was dead-“

“What Cassian means,” says Kaytoo, “is that if it had been him, he would have shot you to end your suffering. He doesn’t want you to die. None of us want you to die. Unless the humans among us are annoyed by having their sleep interrupted, but as that does not apply to me, I will assume they have no such issue with your periodic fits of panic.”

 Jyn glares at the droid. “ _You_ aren’t helping.”

“There is a difference,” says Chirrut, “between believing it would be best for you to die now and knowing that your death would have been merciful then. It was surely the will of the Force for you to live.”

This, Bodhi is sure, would make Chirrut – and probably everyone else – feel better if they had been the ones who had been tortured. But the thought does not comfort him. He is an Imperial pilot, and so many of the Empire’s men have no belief in the Force. Galen Erso believed in it, of course, but Bodhi hasn’t time to spare a thought for it in a long, long time.

“What for?” he asks, as if Chirrut knows. “What can I do? So far, I haven’t-“

“You’re literally the reason we’re here right now!” Cassian shakes his head. “You can’t say you’ve done nothing. Because of you, things are moving forward for the Rebellion! We have hope!”

Bodhi considers this, and does not tell Cassian that the Rebellion would still have its hope if Saw Gerrera had had him shot. But his silence must say enough for both Cassian and Jyn to guess at his thoughts.

“Bodhi,” Cassian says, “I _didn’t mean it like that_ , I just meant that if it had been me I would have-”

“I know,” he says. “I know, it’s fine.”

“We’ll help you.” Jyn chews on her bottom lip. “Somehow. You’re not alone and you’re not going to be alone, not anymore. We can fix this.”

“The Rebellion has doctors who can help,” Cassian contributes. “When we get back, I’ll make sure we find someone who can help you. Jyn’s right; there has to be a way to fix this.”

Bodhi thinks of how his hands – always unsteady, but usually manageable – have begun to shake always, not just when he is nervous. Of how he tried to braid his hair after they left Jedha, and had to give up because of how his hands shook.

He thinks of how it’s gotten harder to form words. Thinks of his screaming nightmare and wonders if it will happen again, if it will always happen.

He does not think Cassian’s rebel doctors can fix this.

(And even if it can be fixed, being shot would fix it faster, and of course he would never shoot himself, but there is no harm in knowing he would rather be dead if he does not plan to act on that thought.) 

So he says nothing. And again his silence says what he cannot, but this time no one tries to fill that silence with their own words.

Cassian reaches out first, hesitant and awkward but somehow determined, and frankly, it feels like it’s been years since anyone embraced him, and Bodhi doesn’t know how to react.

(The last person to hold him was Galen Erso, just before he left for his mission. He knows it was really only a few days ago that he left, but it feels, to him, as if it were a lifetime ago. He feels that he’s been through his own personal version of hell since he left the Empire.)

He forgets how to think or speak, and by the time he remembers, Jyn and Chirrut are there too. Then Baze is wrapping his arms around not just Bodhi, but all of them, as if he thinks he can protect them all single-handedly.

Bodhi doesn’t know how to feel about this. He knows he should thank them – he wants to thank them – but it seems almost intrusive, to be held so close by these four people he barely knows.

(But then, something tells him he’s never going to see Galen again. That these people he barely knows are all he has now.)

He looks up, past Cassian, and sees Kaytoo still sitting in the pilot’s chair, his arms folded across his chest. 

“I’m not hugging you,” Kaytoo informs him. Bodhi, eyeing Kaytoo’s potentially dangerous metal exterior, is not offended by this at all.

He doesn’t feel safe, exactly, even surrounded by his friends. He’s not sure he will ever feel safe again.

(And he doesn’t know it yet, but days later he will die alone as Rogue One explodes, knowing at least that the Rebellion has the Death Star plans, that his mission has been fulfilled, even as terror and pain fill the few remaining crevices of sanity in his mind.)

But Cassian Andor saved his life, and Jyn and Baze and Chirrut – and possible Kaytoo, he’s still not sure – are glad he’s alive.

This alone cannot save him. It would take far, far more to save him. But in this moment – and in so many moments between this one and his last – it helps.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. I wrote this just after I saw Rogue One, and finally got around to posting it, so here you go I guess? I haven't yet read the novelization, so I'm not sure how this would even fit into that, but you know. 
> 
> I love Star Wars, but I'm not exactly up to date on the terminology and all that, so hopefully I didn't get anything terribly wrong. 
> 
> Basically, Bodhi needed a hug and I needed to sort out my headcanon, and then Cassian just kind of inserted himself into the story, so who knows what's going on here anymore? Maybe it's something vaguely coherent. Maybe not. Who knows? It's definitely too late for me to be awake and posting this.


End file.
